Black cabs go green in NYC.
New York City Mayor Bloomberg continued to provide leadership in implementing policies intended to curb greenhouse gas emissions when he announced that all 10,000 of the city’s black town cars (also known by their politically incorrect nickname “Gypsy cabs,” due to the fact that they often cruise the city picking up passengers) would be required to increase their fuel efficiency standards to 30 miles per gallon by 2010. (They currently average around 13 miles per gallon.)
The result will be that these town cars are going to have to shift to hybrid technology in order to meet the strict requirements, which are intended to reduce their emissions by 50%. Mayor Bloomberg has a history of taking a strong leadership position on environmental issues, highlighted by his comprehensive plan to reduce the city’s aggregate carbon emissions by 30% by 2030, which also includes requiring all 13,000 of the city’s yellow cabs to be hybrids by 2012.
One thing about this policy that is especially appealing to us is that it is not mandating the type of technology to be used in achieving the fuel efficiency standards. As we have seen, mandating a technology can backfire if that technology is later shown to exacerbate the target problem (e.g., ethanol causing more greenhouse emissions than oil, or paper bags potentially being more detrimental to the environment than plastic, depending on usage). Bloomberg, in creating fuel efficiency rules, will allow the market to determine the best way to meet those goals. Given the current state of automobile technology, the current solution just happens to be hybrid engines.
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